LoPo dot com - Tech Minded, but Slightly Lop-sided.

I know….I’m the minority here, I wasn’t one of the Technophobes stiff in the pants for the new iPhone 3G / iPhone 2.0 Firmware release today. Though, I’m a Messaging Administrator at a sizeable Fortune 500 International company and I know that I need understand the implications, administration, and maintenance if the iPhone were to be approved for corporate use in my environment. I love Blackberry’s and the recent iteration of Windows Mobile has grown on me.

I should start with, we are a Blackberry shop. I have approximately 1,500 BB’s deployed across my 7 BES servers globally. We currently do not have Exchange’s ActiveSync technology in use, however I ran an eval about a year and a half ago along with one of our Security Analysts and the conclusion was that the technology + devices tested did not meet our security and stability requirements. My recommendation was to wait and see what the upgrade to Exchange 2007 SP1 brought in terms of policy and the Windows Mobile 6 update did. Fast forward to today, July 11^th and the release of the iPhone with Exchange ActiveSync support. What does this bring us in comparison to the Windows Mobile devices out there? How will it meet security requirements? How well does it play with the Exchange ActiveSync policies? Blackberry Killer - NO, Best Enterprise Phone _ NO.

Well..well…well… I will say “not very well at all” to any of them. Ooh, ah, oh, I can hear the Apple fanboi’s going crazy right now. Have you been able to activate that shiny new $300 brick yet? No, iTunes is still down? Apple didn’t learn from their mistakes of last year… and decided to rollout 3 new products at once. Ouch. Ok sorry, that was a low blow, I’m focusing on Enterprise use here. Back on topic.

There’s a nice little Enterprise Deployment Guide PDF found here.

Reading through this guy I found some features “left out” of Apple’s Exchange support – in the nice section titled “Exchange ActiveSync Features Not Supported”

1. Folder Management – hrm, so I can’t select which folders to sync? I can’t move items between folders?
2. Opening links in email to documents stored on Sharepoint servers – not much of a complaint here.
3. Task Synchronization – Why not? Most Road warriors I know manage their tasks on their mobile devices.
4. Setting an “Out of office” autoreply message – I won’t even acknowledge this one, because this is just stupidity.
5. Creating meeting invitations – why not? This seems like a basic function for any mobile user. To me this is just plain silliness.
6. Flagging messages for follow-up – I wish my Blackberry’s did this, but they don’t. However, Windows Mobile 6.x in conjunction with Exchange server 2007 does.

Remote Wipe is supported and had to be, though I’m curious how this will look once more iPhones get rolled out. Since you’re talking 4-16GB worth of storage, what happens when a user wipe’s their device and all their media – whether it be legal or not, is wiped by the administrators. Some think that hey, I have it on my computer, but possibly not when you’re talking about movies/video that can consume several GB’s on your PC. It could pose an interesting future of how the iPhone will be used in the Enterprise.

I’m out for the weekend, more iPhone spanking next week.